Did the "I-want-to-settle-every-last-piece-of-land!" AI mentality get fixed?

[Bei1052]

Normally I play on large maps, but have just played a couple of small maps to get accustomed to the new mechanics. I haven't seen much about it, but does anyone know if the AI's willingness/ability to settle every last piece of land without repercussion has been fixed?

On large/huge/custom sized maps, this could get fairly annoying to see an AI with either 30+ cities, or to see AI cities within your empire.

 

[Mercade]

Because of the Science modifier on ultra wide civilizations, it would make sense for AI to sprawl less. Play some large/huge maps and let us know your experience.

 

[MantaRevan]

In my experience, they don't sprawl as much. But they also do much worse trying to play tall than they do wide.

 

[strhopper]

In my few games the ai tends to play tall. Last game half a Continent was left unsettled

 

[Martinus]

There is also a new trait for maps which reads something like "maximum number of cities" which I suspect is used to tell the AI it should tone down on settlement once certain thresholds are reached by all civs globally.

 

[CaptainUnknown]

I think we are forgetting the most important aspect affected to city settling. That is happiness.

To answer your question indirectly, the AI happiness bonus got reduced a lot late game to the point where you can make them unhappy with ideologies and even flip their cities to your ownership. The AI in G&K never hardly ever got unhappy and I presume spread a lot of cities because it could. As others have mentioned the AI seem to play taller more often, likely because it was no longer worth to settle additional cities.

Another possible factor is that when you have a lot of cities you will suffer a small science penalty(5%). This is so you can't have a bunch of low low pop cities and have a massive run-a-way like science boost, you actually need the science buildings. I'm sure the AI are aware of this in some way and that could also stop them a bit.